Campanula is a great plant family! This carefree carpeting plant has been in my garden for 20+ years. I don’t remember where I got it originally. I started with it in the brick bed next to our front porch, and then took divisions and planted it in the Douglas fir bed, where it has spread nicely and blooms beautifully every June.

The main area where this plant is growing is being taken over by native plants, so I’ll just work in 2020 to keep this plant in line and grab some divisions as I go for plant sales.

Much touted by Christopher Lloyd as a keystone perennial in his Dixter borders, I started some of these plants from seed in 2018 for the memory garden. Many of them germinated and grew, but I lost a lot of them over the winter. The two that were left have been superstars, though, and they are starting to seed around a bit, so I should have voluntary V. bonariensis for years to come.

There are many things to like about this plant. It is tall–gets to about five feet for me, with strong stems and deep green color. The tiny flowers still manage to be showy in their massed umbels and they last for months, opening a few florets at a time over the summer and fall. This plant is also a pollinator favorite and one of the few plants I can count on to attract the Skipper butterflies that I love.

I will try to get more photos of the plants in 2020–I’m not sure how I managed to not get any pictures last year. I guess that speaks to this plant being more of a background enhancement and less of an attention-seeking diva.

This Beefsteak Begonia was sent to me as a cutting from Leon’s cousin Imelda in California two years ago. I stuck it in a gallon pot with another cutting and pretty much forgot about it until this spring when I was cleaning things up and decided to give it the respect it deserves. The leaves are fantastic on this plant–fleshy, red-backed and deep green. The flowers are nice, too.

The plant is just leafing out now (early June) on the patio. This is the only photo I have so far–I’ll add more as it fulfills its beefy potential.

This amazing plant has been in my collection for at least ten years. It was a discount plant I purchased at Wight’s nursery, if I remember right. I put it in a patio pot and it has put on a bigger an better show every year. The leaves are deep green with red tones and backing, and the stems are maroon. They shoot up tall in spring and the flower show of myriad red flowers starts soon after.

The last two photos are how the plant looks in 2020. My plans are to try a few leaf cuttings of this plant this spring/summer to have more of them. It grows so perfectly on the patio that a few more would add to the patio show in summer. I’ll keep the plant fed and watered and we’ll see how it blooms come July.

This hybrid might be “Honeysuckle” but the tag is long gone. This was a tiny plant from Molbak’s nursery that I bought for my office when I was just starting my Lung Association job–about 20 years ago! This plant is a survivor. It is similar to the other cane begonia that I have, but is shorter, has fewer spots on the leaves, and the flowers are lighter in color. I keep it in the greenhouse now and I haven’t taken great care of it. It keeps on growing, though, and blooming late in the year when the greenhouse really needs color.

My 2020 plans for this plant are well underway–I potted on into a bigger pot and better soil and fed it really well. It is already responding! I expect a large batch of flowers come August.

That this plant continues to exist in the greenhouse is somewhat miraculous. I started it from seed at least ten years ago and have done very little to maintain it or care for it since. I leave it in a large pot in the greenhouse all summer. It leafs out in February/March, blooms early (May/June) and then goes dormant in the hottest part of the year.

The other miracle of this species is its fragrance. It fills the greenhouse with a sweet, clean scent. The flowers are pretty, too, thought hey seem prone to predation by insects.

Since I’m appreciating this plant more appropriately this year, my 2020 plans include topdressing it’s pot, dropping a Jobe’s spike in there and hoping the plant will grow more and spread a bit.

My oldest of these shrubs is one I started from seed gathered in Tonasket around 2015. I planted it out into the memory garden in 2018 and it is thriving there. In my quest for native plants, I’m excited that this one is growing and has started feed some local fauna–caterpillars and pollinators.

This year, the plant has sent out a bunch of suckers under the landscape fabric and is threatening to take over the memory garden. For 2020, I will wait until these are well-rooted, then move them to the native plant garden and pot some up and pass them to neighbors.

The flower color of the usual Oriental poppy clashes badly with most other colors. However, it contrasts nicely with blue fowers and creates a stir with deep yellows. Luckily, I’m not a good enough gardener to eliminate every clashing flower scenario I see! And some of the color variants of this plant are remarkable.

I grow these plants from seed. When we first moved to the house about 25 years ago, I grew a strain called Pizzicato, which is shorter than the type species in a mix of colors. A few of these plants still survive in our driveway bed. I started seeds of the Fruit Punch strain in 2018 for use in the memory garden. I planted out about ten plants in 2019 and they are blooming in 2020. Several of them feature nice, soft pink blooms. Others are the orange-scarlet clashing color. I’m hoping for a white one or two.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to keep them watered and fed and hope to get them to grow a bit more so they throw more blooms next year.

Hardy geraniums are one of my favorite garden plants. Even the rambunctious ones have their merits, but this sterile hybrid has good manners to go with her fantastic looks. I don’t remember which mail order house this plant came from–it was planted in the spring of 2018 into the memory garden that replaced the hell strip along N 137th Street.

I’ve read wonderful things about G. psilostemon, which is one of Patricia’s parents, especially from Christopher Lloyd, who used that plant to great effect. I’m happy that I ended up with Patricia instead because I think G. psilostemon would have been too boisterous for this narrow flower bed.

Hardy geraniums tend to be carefree. This plant doesn’t ask for much. Shearing it back after the first flush of bloom seems to bring a longer blooming season. I feed it every year and water sometimes.

My 2020 plans for this plant are just to keep it healthy and try to get more/better photos of it.

My favorite seed house for perennial ornamentals is Chiltern’s in the UK. I grew a packet of mixed Campanula seeds they offered and ended up with just two adult plants that survived the transition to the garden and beyond. One is a blue C. lactiflora and the other is a white version.

I’m familiar with more diminutive bellflowers. But these milky bellflowers get to be tall and full–close to four feet tall for me and probably three feet across when they are in full bloom.

I don’t have as many photos as I should of these plants, so I’ll make sure to add some new ones this year.

My 2020 plans for them are to keep them fed and watered and tied to the apple trees they are planted near.